Saelem's Xenoforge [1.3.7 era]

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I had a previous tech thread which I realized after messing with the latest blocks is quite out of date. New components and mechanics make many of my older techs completely obsolete, or in heavy need of an update. rather than wholesale reworking my entire catalog to update, I figured I'd just make a new thread. In this new thread, the images will also be tech snapshots, allowing you to grab them for your game if you so feel like. (It's a common sense thing, but I didn't know it was a possibility when I started my first thread.)

First up is an oldie-but-goodie and consistently one of my favorite techs. For re-presentation is the Crow, updated with Hawkeye landing skids for a purist Hawkeye feel. If you're a new player trying to get the hang of making a flying tech, this is a really good tech to start with. Basically it's a Hawkeye version of the Venture Lift-Off and is good for doing venture missions, scouting terrain, and generally having fun in the air. Works perfectly with the default aeroplane control scheme.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Editing an old post to update the tech. The Strix has been updated to Mod 2 to make use of the new Hawkeye body blocks and that the Paladin Bomb has now graduated. This is the second of my Chariot "helicopters". The Mod 2 removes the use of anti-grav and instead relies on pure LME thrust for lift.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

When I was working on the Rhinoceros 2, I was actually doing a build-off to see which would handle the job of aerial hauler better; a Hawkeye helicopter, or a BF airship. In my campaign I usually set up auto miners all over the map, then return periodically to collect the resource pile. The original Rhinoceros was great for this purpose, and I spent a great deal of time with it. I wanted to see if BF would do it better. The requirements were flight capability, good cargo capacity, high top-speed, and ease of pick-up and drop-off. Here is the result, the Whale Shark. (Yes, I know sharks have vertical tails, don't judge me.)

The Whale Shark operates simultaneously as an airship and a hovercraft. It has 2x GeoCorp HC Scotty Collectors mounted on the belly, and hovers at a distance which allows them to be completely full without scraping the ground. This makes picking up and dropping off resource chunks extremely easy as the tech body itself never gets in the way. It's also fast, sporting a significant booster system. This thing was a bear to create. I spent probably 12 hours trying to tune the maneuvering and I'm still not 100% satisfied. The movement systems in this thing are bonkers complicated (it has multiple centers of lift, if anyone cares), but all things considered, it worked out well.

It's lightly armed and armored, but it's fast and can carry a lot of resources. The only thing it doesn't quite have over the old Rhino is staying power in a fight. But that's not its role anyway. If you try it out, comment what you think. I'm curious about people's thoughts on this one.

Fair warning, you will drop resources if you try to boost with a full load. There's no way around this that I know of.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

After a hiatus, I have come back to TerraTech to play with the lastest updates. I also started the campaign over, and I have to say the whole game feels dramatically improved. I remember thinking I'd be clever and make a geocorp hovering trailer to tow behind my main tech to do resource processing. It... didn't work at the time. Oh how things have changed. On that note, I present to you, the mighty

Ancalagon War Train

[This isn't a tech snapshot]

The design for the Ancalgon was originally inspired my by my much older Adamantian energy tanker. I love the Adamantian and it's still one of my staple techs, but I could do more with it. The Adamantian was inspired by scifi trains, but sadly, due to its sheer weight, it's not terribly mobile. I had the thought to put it on hovers when BF came out, but I could never get it to feel satisfying. That changed in 1.0.3.4 when the exp extra large hover moved to hawkeye. And so, I present the Ancalagon. The name comes from Tolkien's massive black dragon, and given the size of this beast, I find it fitting. The Ancalagon is the only multi-tech I've built so far, and by far, the largest TerraTech creation I've ever built. It's taken me dozens of hours to build it to this point.

So what is the Ancalogon? It's a hawkeye hover train built as a moving base. I'll show each of the cars and engine in individual posts, but so far, I've built seven. In order in the picture: 1. The Engine, 2. Energy Tanker, 3. Scrapper, 4. Drone Carrier, 5. Refinery, 6. Factory, 7, Cruise Missile Battery. The engine alone is over 40 units long, and the entire train is made mostly of hawkeye parts. No antigrav here either (except for the carrier's drones). It feels like a... ahem... freight train to pilot, but to know that any function you could possibly want is being towed behind as you coast over the tops of trees, through the desert, or over the flats, feels phenomenal. The car attachments are robust and reliable, and the Ancalagon can handle most terrain surprisingly well. Each car can adjust hover height on the fly (which helps for mating) and chain-links power down from car to car, always keeping it well charged. Over flat terrain with the cars shown, the Ancalagon can travel at a respectable 40 mph, and 62 mph with boost.

Every car has identical male and female train hitches, so any car can mate to any car (other than the engine). They have a beam of single-axis gryos too keep them comfortably stable while anchored or not, and a every car has at least two heavy gyros for all directions. The train is spectacularly stable.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Ancalagon Engine is filled to the brim with boosters and engines. It's role is to pull the entire train, and so though it has some defense, it's main purpose is for pulling. The forward mounted cannons and cruise missile launchers can insta-pop smaller aggressive enemies during travel.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

This is the second car in the train, and should always be. It is the "coal" car, so to speak, and keeps the engine charged. It also charges the rest of the train behind it, and any nearby tech which drives up to either side. This pic also shows the "female" end of the train hitch I'm using.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Next is the Scrapper Car. This car is designed to accept any block or resource chunk and sell it. I really loved how the deployable nature of the hawkeye industry blocks plays in this car's feel. They all close their roller doors when the tech is unachored, which is exactly what you would expect to happen for something like this.

[Edit: The original scrapper car wasn't working as intended. I decided to split the functions of refinery and scrapper into different cars to help simplify the the conveyor systems. Now works quite well as a dedicated scrapper.]

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Coming in at a whopping 57 blocks long, is the factory car. This thing is a work of art. I tested it extensively to make sure no blocks got caught in it's intricate fabrication mechanisms. It can accept a hawkeye resource cube in each scrapper port, then manufacture literally any part without intervention from the player. You do not have to micromanage component factories with this rig, even for the highest tier parts. Secondly, the scrappers feed single-resource silos, meaning the total number of resources chunks in the queue is mostly hidden inside the scrappers, and as a result, not rendered. This helps reduce the infamous "factory lag". In my campaign, I've used this a lot at this point. It's probably the best factory I've ever built.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I figured my train needed a way to have a deployable defense, so I created the Ancalagon Drone Carrier. It's a car which can deploy 4 anti-grav drones for base defense via exploding bolts. These drones use BF sky anchors and serve as pretty wicked turrets. This thing was kind of a pain to balance, but it turned out well. Make sure the repair bubbles and antigrav are ON before deploying the drones, so you can position the drones where you want. The weight shift after deploying the drones makes the car sit at an angle. There are pitch trim gyros (on the aft end of the flatbed) which bring it back into balance without the weight of the drones. Makes a good generic flatbed without the drones attached.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I thought I'd post on the turret drone itself, also. I'm proud of this little bugger. It's weightless, and sits at 150 meters up when anchored. That height puts it completely out of reach of almost every NPC tech who might attack, and it's twin gimble railguns allow it to rain extremely accurate fire down onto attackers. These railguns are surprisingly devastating. Their accuracy is delightful, and though they might not be as powerful as cannons, they can hit from safely out of range and drill right to the enemy cab. These turrets can defend a HUGE range. Just one can hit virtually the entire length of the Ancalagon.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The two final Ancalagon cars are now ready. First is the Refinery car. Does what it says, grabs chunks from nearby cars to refine, then compress or sell. Has two tandem hawkeye refineries for high speed resource processing. Can compress up to 4 different resources at once. The small venture SCU allows it to grab compressed blocks without interfering with the role of neighboring cars. It can also charge itself with fuel chunks.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

And very last; Ancalagon's tail. I struggled with the role this car should take. I tried to make it a towable resource gatherer, a second engine for faster speed, all sorts of things. After building most of the Ancalagon in campaign and realizing it was somewhat vulnerable to attack from megaton spam, I decided a cruise missile battery was in order for the final car. Ancalagon is not meant to slow down once it's going. Stopping for combat is not advised since the train has so much momentum and 7 individual AIs to manage. Instead, it cruises past any assaulter it can't destroy with the engine, and let's the tail rain fiery death upon any who give chase. It is, afterall, a cruise missile battery. The tail also has rows of Zeus lasers. Why Zeus' lasers? They have the unique ability to track quickly and have no directional limitations on turret firing angle, meaning all of them can be firing at once and hit very accurately. There's also a pair of gimble railguns for good measure (which DO have limits on maximum angle). As the final car of the Ancalagon War Train, this has no linkage for further cars.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I built the first generation of this tech shortly after BF was introduced to explore the new rimless wheels and BF's overall speed. As new parts became available, I kept upgrading it little by little until it entered service in my campaign. It's my fastest ground tech, and an blast to pilot. It can do a pretty good job of hit and run attacks, taking on much much heavier techs. It makes an excellent scout as well. With the new paint job, it I could have called it the Brotherhood of Nod attack bike. It's a versatile little combat tech.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

[Edit] Like some other techs, the Cursebreaker received cosmetic changes with the new HE body blocks.

Lacking a full-fledged airship in my arsenal, I set out to make a battlecruiser. I knew the footprint I wanted was something akin to Stargate's Daedalus/Prometheus ships, and that the role would be heavy bombardment. I have a disdain for using hoverbug, too. Feels like cheating to me so unless it's a concept build, I don't use it. Making a heavy airship without hoverbug? Challenge accepted. The result? The Cursebreaker Battlecruiser. The principle lift is linear motion engines, and it has port and starboard nacelles dedicated for that purpose. It needs... a lot of them. 254 to be exact. But it carries a massive energy reserve and and a brutal array of bombardment capability as a result. As I continued to work on the body shape, I drew inspiration from the Kodiak from Command & Conquer, and from the real-world Gerald R. Ford carrier. I've put the Cursebreaker through its paces in creative, and it excels at distance bombardment from 500-600m, as well as closer in at 100-150m. To be fair, the weaponry is calibrated for "hard" enemy techs in campaign and creative, so I did not feel the need to make an overkill monster.

FORUM DEFENDER

Lacking a full-fledged airship in my arsenal, I set out to make a battlecruiser. I knew the footprint I wanted was something akin to Stargate's Daedalus/Prometheus ships, and that the role would be heavy bombardment. I have a disdain for using hoverbug, too. Feels like cheating to me so unless it's a concept build, I don't use it. Making a heavy airship without hoverbug? Challenge accepted. The result? The Cursebreaker Battlecruiser. The principle lift is linear motion engines, and it has port and starboard nacelles dedicated for that purpose. It needs... a lot of them. 254 to be exact. But it carries a massive energy reserve and and a brutal array of bombardment capability as a result. As I continued to work on the body shape, I drew inspiration from the Kodiak from Command & Conquer, and from the real-world Gerald R. Ford carrier. I've put the Cursebreaker through its paces in creative, and it excels at distance bombardment from 500-600m, as well as closer in at 100-150m. To be fair, the weaponry is calibrated for "hard" enemy techs in campaign and creative, so I did not feel the need to make an overkill monster.

Well-Known Member

Coming in at a whopping 57 blocks long, is the factory car. This thing is a work of art. I tested it extensively to make sure no blocks got caught in it's intricate fabrication mechanisms. It can except a hawkeye resource cube in each scrapper port, then manufacture literally any part without intervention from the player. You do not have to micromanage component factories with this rig, even for the highest tier parts. Secondly, the scrappers feed single-resource silos, meaning the total number of resources chunks in the queue is mostly hidden inside the scrappers, and as a result, not rendered. This helps reduce the infamous "factory lag". In my campaign, I've used this a lot at this point. It's probably the best factory I've ever built.

Could I have a download for this so i can reverse-engineer it because the fabrication System seems to be amazing and i really Need a fabrication System of this scale and reliability for my large airship

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Could I have a download for this so i can reverse-engineer it because the fabrication System seems to be amazing and i really Need a fabrication System of this scale and reliability for my large airship

Thanks for the compliment! All the photos in this thread are actually the tech snapshot (except post #6). Just drag and drop the photo into your snapshots folder, and you should be able to load the tech.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Rhino 2 Mod 2 was rebuilt again to the Mod 3 to incorporate new HE body blocks as well as the superior BF Swipe Collectors. The Rhinoceros 2 controls exceptionally well, and this is the tech I probably spend the most time in while playing campaign. I use it to fly to distant autominers, collect the resource piles, then fly back to my mountain-top base. Use the arrow keys to precisely position for landing or aerial pickup.